


When the Bough Breaks: A Ballad of Mary

by Lochinvar



Series: Mary's World [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Sexual Assault, BAMF John Winchester, BAMF Mary Winchester, BAMF Original Female Characters, Baby Sam, Baby Sam Winchester, Bittersweet Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Detectives, F/M, Fixing the Canon, Gen, Good Parent John, Good Parents John & Mary, Hunter Mary, Kansas, Kid Dean Winchester, Lawrence - Freeform, Major Original Character(s), Mary not the victim, Mary-Centric, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Murder, No Sex, No Smut, Original Character Death(s), Parent John Winchester, Police, Police Procedural, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Pre-Series Dean Winchester, Pre-Series Sam Winchester, Protective John Winchester, Protective Mary Winchester, Revenge, Sleeping Dean, Sleeping Sam, The Campbell Family, The Winchester Family, Young Dean Winchester, Young John Winchester, Young Mary Winchester, Young Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 13:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9074761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar/pseuds/Lochinvar
Summary: What did Mary give up when she married John? Did she ever stop being a Hunter?
Inspired by Linden's Salt and Silver and Season 12's Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox, regarding Mary's secret need to hunt
Mature rating because of attempted rape and murder scenes, erring on the side of caution
Mary, John, and the brothers are not harmed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Linden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/gifts).



> I own nothing; rely on the kindness of strangers.
> 
> Always grateful for kudos and comments.
> 
> Based on a true story.
> 
> Cambric tea: Mary was drinking Constant Comment (r) tea (Orange Spice) mixed 50/50 with milk, a soothing drink for cold nights

It was a cold Monday night in November in Lawrence, Kansas; a steady wet wind born in the foothills of Colorado was cantering across hundreds of miles of prairie and farmland. 650 miles to the west, a blizzard was waking up on Vail Pass; it would be arriving before the end of the week, following the interstate east to Denver and into the plains of Colorado and the Sunflower State.

The 24-hour diner sat in a modest shopping mall next to the Kansas River, at the north edge of the small city off of an Interstate 70 cloverleaf. The wind ruffled waves on the river’s surface. Against the east side of the diner were a dozen parking spots; only half were filled, split between local and out-of-state license plates.

A lone, wizened man, short, with skin burnt ash brown after decades of working on deck and dock in the tropics, silently waited on the second shift customers. He grilled breakfast meats and burgers, assembled sandwiches, and served hot coffee and toast with jam and butter to less than a dozen sleepy travelers and locals. An ex-Merchant Marine, he wore tattooed sleeves of coral reefs and tropical fish, his scrawny arms knotted with muscles.

Mary Wincester had taken a taxi from their house, a small luxury. Her husband John was driving his Impala; their third-hand truck, an inheritance after the death of her parents, would stay at home. It was not a safe vehicle for her to drive alone and handle their two little boys at the same time, and the truck’s cab lacked a decent heater. Now, she waited in a booth with those boys for John while he finished a late shift at the garage.

Baby Sammy was a sweet-smelling bundle, swaddled in the warmth of his mother’s arms and an old soft bath towel, blue with daisies embroidered on the hem. Big boy Dean laid on the padded red leather bench of the booth, rolled up in his beloved plush yellow baby blanket, his mother’s big cloth purse as a pillow. He was drowned in deep sleep, sated with a late supper of scrambled eggs and a sliver of apple pie.

Mary sipped her special order cambric tea, scented with orange and cloves–too late for coffee–and nibbled on dry crackers, pushing her hunger aside so she could eat with John.

The cook had brought the tea without her asking, remembering the couple from previous visits. She felt comfortable there; it was the kind of diner Hunters would visit. Cheap, good grub and a veil of late night anonymity. John and the cook had talked about their stints in the service a couple of times, mostly dates and places, memories of bad food and worse weather, steering away from the heartbreaking details of war that plagued their nightmares.

The baby acted as a ward, keeping late-night lotharios away from the lovely blonde, in truth, keeping late-night lotharios safe from the lovely blonde, who could break a wrist or dislocate a shoulder one-handed, even while holding her sleeping child.

At the counter a girl, barely eighteen, sat alone. A black challis square, edged in a print border of extravagant red roses, was knotted under her chin, framing dark brown curls. Mary glimpsed milky skin, cheeks whipped to rose by the wind, and green eyes that rivaled Dean’s. A curvy figure was pressed under a winter layer of sweaters and an ancient men’s long overcoat of dark wool, pulled from a church’s thrift store rack. She wore navy blue wool pants and cheap black boots that buckled across the front, like old-fashioned galoshes.

The girl huddled over a Salisbury steak crisscrossed with brown gravy, with hash browns and two eggs over easy. She took her time, small bites, chewing slowly between sips of coffee, no cream.

Mary found herself staring. Profiling the girl as she was trained to, a game she still played as a sidelined hunter. Was the girl a monster, a threat, or just an innocent civilian? No ring. A clerk? A student? A live-in housemaid? A single girl, needing a night away from her parents? Or someone traveling, stopping for a meal before she checked in to the Motel 6 nearby. If she were traveling it would be hard to tell if she was heading towards something, or someone, or just running away. The sad look on her face made Mary guess the latter. Or maybe she was regretting her decision.

Perhaps she was a Talismen, part of the shadow underground that supported the hunter community with money, reconnaissance, free meals, free beds, and the occasional creature comforts. If so, she would have a silver tattoo of a dagger somewhere on her body, one that glowed when it encountered the supernatural, sort of like a biological EMF detector. But Mary did not want to bring attention to herself, if that was the case. Nothing to say.

_Hi, I used to be a Hunter. Used to be useful._

She shook her head to dislodge that traitorous thought and gripped Sammy a little tighter. He whimpered and stretched, but stayed asleep.

\--------

If the girl was aware Mary was looking at her, she did not look up. Probably figured that a woman with an infant and sleeping child was not a threat.

Mary decided her name was Sofia. Based on the roses on the scarf and the lovely complexion, Bulgarian, perhaps.

The counter was covered in worn, yellow linoleum, a do-it-yourself fix-up from the 1950s. Sofia’s keys were splayed in front of her next to her plate and a plain tan leather wallet. Keys are handy weapons: legal brass knuckles. Her mother probably taught her, or an older sister.

_Slash the cheek, poke the eye, break the eyeglasses, rip the soft flesh on the inner arm through the sleeve, bruise the thigh or genitals._

_Pain and surprise,_ she probably was instructed, _so you can run to your car, slam the door, and spin off into the night._

“You hold this tight,” someone she loves, and who loves her, demonstrated, showing how the teeth needed to poke through the spaces between her fingers. Added a few more keys to the ring for weight and impact. Holding it, she was told, changed how she walked, the look on her face.

The opportunistic would look elsewhere for softer prey.

Mary remembered a hundred such tricks, taught to her by her father, her mother, and the older Hunters who would dote on her at crossroad bars, those times when she was on an overnight hunt in the Heartland. She wanted to share those tricks with Sofia.

_When you are that pretty, you need to find ways to fly under the radar and not draw attention to yourself. The wrong make-up can camouflage health and beauty. Tone down your rosewater complexion and mimic sallow exhaustion brought on by chronic, contagious diseases for which there are no cures._

_Practice a flat, dead stare in the mirror. Affect a limp, the dragging foot from a stroke. A cough, which you pretend to try to hide. Gag into a napkin, look, grimace, and fold it away in your coat pocket, so no one can see the nonexistent yellow sputum and blood. Rub a little lotion in your hair to mimic grease and poor hygiene._

_And pick the right places to eat._

Mary smiled to herself. Diners near the interstates are preferred by women driving alone at night, where state troopers, county sheriffs, and patrolling city cops are likely to cluster like climax predators around a watering hole, keeping the packs at bay.

Some Hunters avoided law enforcement, but her father Samuel saw them as allies. Taught his daughter to make friends of them. Many would look away to protect a Hunter’s escape. Or be counted on as back up to shield civilians. And if they were Talismen or Hunters, they carried their own rounds of silver bullets and cartridges filled with rock salt, stuck in hidden compartments in their jackets to avoid discovery during surprise inspections.

\--------

Outside, the constant wind hummed through the rusted holes of metal signs and muttered through high stands of weeds along the west side of the building, nearer the river. Garbage cans rattled behind a fenced enclosure by the kitchen’s back door.

The occasional gust shook the exterior front door, solid wood reinforced with iron strips bolted into place. The wind banged worn-out tire chains hanging from hooks on the west wall of the café, mementos of blizzards that coated local roads with ice as thick as greenhouse glass. Storms where the sleet froze as it engulfed cars, shutting down the interstate every year or three.

Mary glanced at the clock. John was punctual, out the door at the garage as soon as his shift was over and his tools put away. His boss and co-workers gibed him good-naturedly about his beautiful wife, how he could not stand being away from her and his boys for long.

All his ambition and hard work came from his devotion to her and was funneled back into their future. John suspected that he loved Mary more than she loved him. He could never reach some piece of her, as if she was keeping a secret. But, he forgave her his worries when they lay in each other’s arms, her smelling of her favorite lily-of-the-valley cologne and Sammy’s baby powder.

Yes, he was punctual; he would be coming through the front door in ten minutes or less.  
\---------  
Simultaneously, Mary and the lone girl, her Sofia, jerked, heads up, staring at the front of the diner. Under the wind, a faint, high-pitched wail of need and terror from the parking lot slipped between the worn rubber insulation around the windows and entrance.

Sofia twisted in her seat, pushed away from the counter and sprinted across the small lobby, reckless with purpose, and shouldered through the heavy front door.

Mary paused a split second longer, shackled by her napping boys. Maternal and Hunter instincts collided, merged, and shoved her from the booth. A few feet behind Sofia, Mary carried Sammy into battle, believing she could keep him safe. Dean was a sound sleeper, she told herself. Later she would be shocked at how easily she rationalized her both taking Sam and leaving Dean alone.

Sofia veered right when she came outside, and Mary followed.

The parking lot was shared with the other small buildings in the one-block long strip mall. The diner sat alone at the north edge and faced south; to the west were the wetlands and the river. Near the edge of the wetlands, mostly dead cattails and brown reeds this time of the year, sat a couple of industrial-sized dumpsters filled with sand and salt and a detachable plow, waiting patiently for the coming storm.

A well-used green pick-up truck, an old station wagon of indeterminate color with a rusting body, and a newer imported sedan, pale in the intermittent light from the diner, were parked in front of the dumpsters and plow, out of sight of the road in front of the line of buildings.

Two men stood by the truck and watched a third man, large under multiple layers of sweat shirts, crouched over a woman, her face on the ground. He was kneeling with her lower body pinned between his thick legs. It looked liked he had jumped her as she was leaving her automobile; the car door was open, her purse discarded on the asphalt.

The woman’s down car coat was pushed above her waist, and the man was leaning forward, yanking her skirt up underneath him with one hand, the other gripping her neck. She was like a mad dog blindly trying to dodge the killing bullet, writhing in terror. She struggled, kicking and weeping.

The two men standing by were dressed in the worn uniform of the rural working class–blue jean jackets over layers of shirts and sweaters, old billed caps clamped on tight and low against the wind.

They apparently were trying to stop the attack, but their efforts were half-hearted. They plucked at his thick, dirty sweatshirt, shoving at his shoulders, shouting to shame him, but to no effect. He was relentless, and the scene was playing out with the inevitability of Greek tragedy.

Mary yelled for the man to stop. Sofia was running ahead of Mary, swift despite the awkward boots. The girl leapt through the air onto the man’s back and wrenched him sideways off the crying woman. The two men stepped back and froze, stunned by her violence.

Sofia shouted in a foreign language, the words raining down on all their heads like demonic curses. Her weight flattened the attacker, and she grabbed at his hair and knocked his head against the parking lot’s surface.

The victim, with her skirt pulled up to her thighs, scrambled a few feet away and collapsed, sobbing.

\--------

Mary ran to the crying woman and fell to her knees, her long winter coat a barrier against the loose gravel and cold wind. Sammy still was asleep in her arms. She bent over her, telling her over and over that she was going to be okay. The ex-hunter felt helpless to do more. The sleeping baby kept her from holding the woman, making her feel safe, keeping her warm.

The cold wind was bringing the victim to her senses. She managed to work her skirt and coat down, covering her legs. Awkwardly, she sat up and began to rock, tucking her knees to her chest and tugging them close with her arms, head down.

The two onlookers were gone, having jumped into the pick-up truck and driven off.

Mary turned her attention to her Sofia. Silently, the girl continued to pound the attacker’s head into the broken ground. Forgetting her sleeping baby in her arms, the former hunter began to yell at her to stop.

Suddenly, just like during the final scene of an old-time movie serial, the old Merchant Marine cook burst out of the kitchen door with a serviceable deer rifle. Simultaneously, Mary heard the familiar growl of the Impala as John fishtailed his black beast to a stop in front of the diner, braking hard through loose gravel, eager to see his wife and boys. Showing off just a little bit in case she was watching from a window.

John got out of the car, but before he could start for the diner he heard Mary calling for him and turned toward the sound. He saw the movement of the girl out of the corner of his eye as she continued to bash the man’s head.

John ran to the girl’s side and peeled her off the fallen attacker. The cook went back into the diner to call for the police and an ambulance. The girl shook loose from John’s arms–no small feat he remarked later, muscles under all those sweaters and curves, he said to Mary, winking–and stood, breathing heavily.

Her face and hair were spattered faintly with blood and brains.

Mary pushed herself off her knees with one hand and stood up, cradling a now awake and crying Sammy, staying close to the brutalized woman, who continued to rock and moan. The cook came out with a blanket and dropped it around the shoulders of the victim. Mary noticed he was careful not to touch her.

In the far distance, she could hear the distinct duet of siren keens and engine growls, heralding the approach of a _City of Lawrence Police Department_ Crown Vic, the cacophony rising above the wail of the wind. From the other direction an antique claxon bansheed, clearing a path in the sparse night traffic for the city hospital ambulance.

John took in the scene. His wife with the crying baby in her arms. Next to her, at her feet on the ground, a woman whimpered, huddled under a blanket. A man on the asphalt, face down, a few yards away. The bleeding had stopped, and the former Marine has seen too many corpses in war not to recognize death. The body seemed deflated even under the layers of oil-stained clothing.

Next to John, the girl stood motionless, staring at the corpse. The scarf had fallen around her neck. John could see how lovely she was, illuminated by the lights in the diner’s windows. The cook was standing by for orders, his eyes on the young mechanic.

John shivered a little under his leather jacket, but the cook, in short sleeves and a well-used apron, did not seem to mind the weather.

Mary spoke up.

“Maybe,” she said to the girl she still called Sofia in her head, “You should get going.”

John looked at Mary, then at the girl, and nodded

The girl and John trotted into the café. Mary and the cook stayed with the woman outside, awaiting the authorities. Mary talked. The cook listened, nodding his head.

Inside the café, the remaining few customers had fled, leaving change and crumpled bills next to half-eaten meals. The girl grabbed her wallet and keys. She fumbled to pay her tab; John stopped her.

“We’ll take care of things. Go. And clean your face and hair, when you can,” he added, handing her a pile of paper napkins he pulled from the metal holder on the counter.

She put a hand to her face, eyes widening, and nodded.

The girl ran outside. John stayed in the diner for a few moments. He recognized the yellow blanket, where Dean lay sleeping cocooned inside, oblivious to the drama outside. (Later he thought about Mary leaving the toddler alone; something to discuss when the drama of the evening had settled, he decided.)

He heard a door slam, a motor turning, and a car driving away. The police arrive two minutes later, almost colliding with the ambulance just as the young mechanic came out of the diner.

John silently shook his head when the two EMTs ran towards the dead man and pointed to the woman, shaking under the blanket.

\--------

Mary went inside the diner while John and the cook remained outside to talk with the police and emergency personnel. The young Hunter was accustomed to cleaning up crime scenes and removing evidence; she could help Sofia.

Sammy had cried himself back to sleep, but she kept him close. Balancing her baby with one arm, she transferred the girl’s half-finished plate of food with the other hand to her table in the booth and put the used coffee cup and water glass in the plastic bin that held dirty cutlery and china. It would be hauled in the back for the cook to unload in the noisy mechanical dishwasher. She silently gave thanks that neither she nor Sofia used lipstick.

Mary made sure she had the right number of pieces of used silverware for Dean and herself at the booth, putting the extra in the bin. She wiped the countertop clean with the paper napkin the girl had left behind, removing a few telltale crumbs, discarding it in a trash can. She left the other abandoned cups and dishes scattered around the dining room; doubted that crime scene personnel would be pulling fingerprints off of egg-encrusted plates, but if they needed to, she left plenty of red herrings for them to pursue.

She hoped if they did track down and interview the other potential witnesses–doubtful given they were cash customers–no one would remember the girl running outside.

Mary sat down at the booth and waited with her children. Dean, as she predicted, had not moved an inch. She was pleased that he was a secure and happy little boy, who would never have to fear the monsters she had fought as soon as she was old enough to throw a blade and shoot a gun.

The cook played his part well with little preparation. He reported going outside and seeing that the woman on the ground needed help, he went back in to find a blanket and made the call to 911. He mentioned seeing the two men in the truck drive away as well as the other customers. He did not know the dead man on the ground. Yeah, maybe the station wagon was his.

John’s interview was short. He drove from work to meet his wife and children for supper. He heard his wife yell; ran to find her and saw the corpse. Knew the man was dead from his time in Vietnam. Did not want to approach the woman; was concerned she would be frightened by a strange man. Knew the cook had called for help.

One of the police officers went in to talk to Mary. She told her version: waiting for her husband, running out to see what was happening, seeing the men driving away–just a pick-up truck, she said; was too dark to see the color–staying next to the woman, and returning to her sleeping son as soon as she knew the police and EMTs were arriving.

The victim, now sitting in the back of the ambulance while they took her vitals and cleaned the scrapes on her hands and legs, was too dazed to remember anything except the attack and the sudden intervention of something, someone. The police officers closed up her car and handed her the purse and keys.

She was a local, stopping off for a bite to eat after a business trip down from Lincoln, NE before she went home. She lived alone, but had friends who could come back and pick up her car. The EMTs would take her to the hospital, just in case, and she could call her sister, who lived in Emporia, to come stay with her. The officers gave her the card of a counselor, and their cards as well, in case she remembered anything.

She had parked on the west edge of the lot so she could see the river at night. She had sat in her car for a few minutes, enjoying the view of the lights from the city on the waves. The two cars that pulled up made her a little nervous, which is when she got out and was suddenly attacked by the man who jumped from the station wagon. She vaguely remembered the two men yelling at her attacker.

“They saved you, we think,” said one of the police officers. “It went too far, and they ran. Probably won’t catch them, unless it turns out that they knew the deceased.”

The coroner’s wagon arrived, accompanied by two detectives in a blue unmarked sedan. They viewed the scene and walked around the parking lot, talking to the patrol officers.

The detectives asked the same questions as the police officers. It was near the end of their shift, and they were tired and cold, standing in the brisk wind. The temperature was dropping. They all wanted to go home.

The body was removed. The ambulance with the woman and the coroner’s van drove off. The law enforcement officers came into the café, took over an empty table, and talked; the cook served them coffee and waved away a half-hearted attempt on the part of one of the detectives to pay. He bussed the tables while the four men discussed the case and exchanged current gossip about the department.

And then they were gone. Before the men left, one of the detectives told John that they might be in touch, but safe to say, the case was closed.

\--------

John came in to sit with Mary. He dragged over a chair so he would not crowd her and Sammy on the bench in the booth. He could see the fear and grief in her eyes and logically came to the wrong conclusion.

Mary was frightened and sick, but not because, as John surmised, of the violence she had witnessed or dealing with the police and detectives. She felt overwhelmed by a sense of failure.

If she had planned ahead, maybe brought a baby seat into the diner for Sammy instead of just holding him, she would have been ready in an emergency. She could have been out the door fast enough to pull the stalwart Sofia aside and save the attacker’s life. He would be sore, maybe with a wrenched arm or broken collar bone, but alive right now, in the back of the police car, and the girl would have received a valuable life lesson about not leaving a stranger’s brain’s leaking onto dirty gravel.

He was a man, and although what he planned to do was monstrous, he was not a monster.

John wanted to hold her, but the best he could do was to cover one of her hands with his while she hugged Sammy. He could feel her slow pulse under his fingers and wondered at her strength, at how calm she was after the ordeal.

The cook was busy.

He had cleared their booth and reset the table with fresh silverware and napkins, clean glasses of water, and a basket of microwaved dinner rolls with a handful of butter pats. He did not ask for an order, but replenished Mary’s spiced tea and milk concoction and brought John a clean cup and his own pot of coffee. Next, bowls of soup–Monday was chicken noodle night–then a medium rare cheeseburger for John and meatloaf for Mary. He served side dishes of well-buttered corn and diced carrots and small baked potatoes, wrapped in foil and split open, steam pouring up into the cool air of the café.

“On the house,” he said.

Mary surprised John with her appetite. They ate silently. John left the cook a large tip, more than the cost of their meal and the girl’s. He carried Dean out, hugging the warm body and blanket to his chest.

\--------

Mary would not let a human die again. That she knew for sure.

John would be shocked, but he would come to understand. He was a good man. He had the instincts for the job, and his Marine training and war experience kept him steady in a crisis. They worked well as a team.

She also would tell him about the bad deal she made, and they would make it right.

Sammy’s six-month birthday was coming up in a week–next Monday to be exact–and the family was getting together the following weekend as an excuse to celebrate. She would inform her cousins that there would be no more secrets about the Campbell’s family business, and they would explain it all to John. About Hunters and what the world was really like.

She could wait a few days.


End file.
